Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 83 Miloš Lichner grants love of purity to the lustful, moderates the greed of the miserly with restraint, corrects the careless with honesty… because God puts the power of his word into each person in different ways, such that every person finds what he needs in Scripture, so that the germ of virtue can grow in it” (Gregorius 1979, 299). Therefore, in the Commentary on the prophet Ezekiel, he writes that “God’s words grow with the one who reads them” (Gregorius 1971, 87). As can be seen, growth in the spiritual understanding of the Holy Scriptures is connected to the internal conversion of the reader, to his moral life, which is manifested in love. The double commandment to God and to the neighbor (Mt 22:37–40) is thus a source of spiritual growth in the understanding of the Holy Scriptures (Gregorius 1971, 278). In the Augustinian line, however, Gregory recalls, this love is an undeserved gift of God, and therefore intellectual humility is the basic condition for the growth of love in the heart of the reader. This is certainly not a resignation to intellectual inquiry; it is an awareness of the clash of created intellect with the uncreated word of God. 7 The Relation between the Lecture and Personal Spirituality However, according to Gregory, it is not sufficient to just read a sacred text; it must also bring about a moral transformation of the reader. We could even interpretively say that according to Gregory, the correct understanding of the Holy Scriptures occurs only if what is understood is put into the life of the reader: “Many actually read [note: the Bible], and after reading it they fast from the reading itself. Many hear the voice of the preachers, but after hearing it they remain empty. Although their bellies are full, their bowels are not filled, because although they perceive the meaning of the Holy Scripture with their minds, it is as if they forget them and do not keep what they heard and do not store it in the bowels of their hearts” (Gregorius 1971, 147). And so, in Gregory’s view, knowledge of the Holy Scriptures that is not followed by an internal change to a better life is a direct sin. Although such a reader may have a correct understanding of the sacred text because he does not put what he has understood into practical life, he utters the holy words without loving them and thus “treads on them with his life”. Such people are not tempted by the “ancient enemy” (the devil) in their intelligence, nor contradicted in their meditation on the sacred text. However, he destroys their life in the sense of action and practice of such people, who are praised due to their valuable knowledge but who remain completely unaware of the damage they cause by their actions (Gregorius 1979, 291). Of course, Gregory is not the first who emphasized that ascetics should also devote themselves to the service of their neighbors, since prosociality is a modality of self-transcendence (Dojčár 2021, 298). However, while the pinnacle of spiritual life for Cassian is the mystical connection with God, for Gregory it is sacrificial service to others, and therefore its rejection is a manifestation of pride, which in turn makes the correct interpretation of Holy Scripture impossible (Gregorius 1971, 60). 8 Conclusion The Holy Scriptures have been an inseparable component of spiritual formation in Christianity since the earliest times. The Gregorian corpus points to the fact that this sacred text offers not only intellectual education, but spiritual formation with an overlap into concrete life. The reader will find in it hagiographic models to be followed that draw the reader into the ongoing history of salvation, where he thus becomes an integral part of it. Gregory’s emphasizing of the contingency of the created world and its vulnerability allows him to highlight the role of the Holy Scriptures in the image of a lamp that shows the right path, or a letter from God written to man. The Holy Scriptures as a whole include both the Old and the New Testaments, whose connector and finisher is the figure of the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ. When working with a sacred text, in line with the already accepted tradition, Gregory speaks about the three senses of Scripture, starting with the literary one, that is, what the basic wording of the text says. Then there is the allegorical or typological sense, which searches the sacred text for types based on similarity. Finally, there is a tropological or moral sense, in which the reader tries to apply a particular sacred passage to his personal life. Between these senses is an inner connection that depends on the spiritual maturity of the reader. This requires “discernment” (Lat. discretion) of the right meaning, which is achieved by practicing asceticism in humility. Unlike the previous tradition, which understood asceticism as a set of practices, Gregory sees it as renouncing the joys of personal contemplation of God’s love in favor of performing acts of love. Gregory’s hermeneutics thus brings a clear novelty when the commentator of a sacred text connects not only the act of reading but also his religious beliefs and personal lifestyle. The results of our research revive the debate over the interaction between scholarly exegesis of a sacred text and lived spirituality, but they can be helpful in dialogue with other religious systems in their interpretation of their own sacred texts.
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